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spectrum

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Dispersion of white light by a triangular prism spectrum, arrangement or display of light or other form of radiation separated according to wavelength, frequency, energy, or some other propert...

Thouless, David James

(Encyclopedia)Thouless, David James, 1934–2019, British physicist, b. Bearsden, Scotland, Ph.D. Cornell, 1958. He was a professor at the Univ. of Birmingham, England (1965–78), Yale (1979–80), and the Univ. o...

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

(Encyclopedia)Oppenheimer, J. Robert ŏpˈənhīˌmər [key], 1904–67, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1925), Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1927. He taught at the Univ. of California and t...

atom

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Bohr-Rutherford atom CE5 Probability distribution of the electron in the hydrogen atom: A. Ground state B. Highly excited state atom [Gr.,=uncuttable (indivisible)], basic unit of matte...

antiparticle

(Encyclopedia)antiparticle, elementary particle corresponding to an ordinary particle such as the proton, neutron, or electron, but having the opposite electrical charge and magnetic moment. Every elementary partic...

Wilson, Kenneth Geddes

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Kenneth Geddes, 1936–2013, American physicist, b. Waltham, Mass., Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1961. A professor at Cornell (1963–88) and Ohio State Univ. (1988–2008), Wilso...

uncertainty principle

(Encyclopedia)uncertainty principle, physical principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, that places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of certain pairs of simultaneous, related measur...

Chu, Steven

(Encyclopedia)Chu, Steven, 1948–, U.S. physicist and government official, b. St. Louis, Mo., grad. Univ. of Rochester (B.S., A.B. 1970), Univ. of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1976). He worked from 1978 at Bell Lab...

Wheeler, John Archibald

(Encyclopedia)Wheeler, John Archibald, 1911–2008, American physicist and educator, b. Jacksonville, Fla. Educated at Johns Hopkins (Ph.D., 1933), he joined the faculty at Princeton in 1938, and after 1976 was dir...

Bethe, Hans Albrecht

(Encyclopedia)Bethe, Hans Albrecht bāˈtə [key], 1906–2005, American physicist, b. Strassburg, Germany (now Strasbourg, France), educated at Frankfurt and Munich universities. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he c...